Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures — Emma Straub

In 1920, Elsa Emerson, the youngest and blondest of three sisters, is born in idyllic Door County, Wisconsin. While still in her teens, she marries and flees to Los Angeles, where she is discovered by Irving Green, one of the most powerful executives in Hollywood. He refashions her as a serious, exotic brunette, and renames her Laura Lamont. Laura experiences all the glamour and extravagance of the heady pinnacle of stardom in the studio system era, but ultimately her story is a timeless one of a woman trying to balance career, family, and personal happiness, all while remaining true to herself. Ambitious and richly imagined, this novel is as intimate -- and as bigger-than-life -- as the great films of the golden age of Hollywood.